I’m like a bird

While June turned into July

Hello to you from me and my pinky! After almost two weeks of relieving hand postures and feeling rather handicapped, I am now as good as new. Well, I am still terrifed of water touching my finger and it’s not exactly a pretty sight under my band aid but at least it’s not a monstrous bandage anymore. Also, I can type. And lift things. Eat. I even tried biking last night and didn’t die or anything. Occasionally, the finger starts hurting like crazy for some seconds still though.

The surgeon is also very satisfied with my finger and gave me his mobile phone number, „whatsapp me if anything starts feeling bad“. Modern patient care, you know.

Art

When I was studiying, I did not have any problem motivating myself to visit museums and art exhibitions. Nowadays, I am somewhat lazy. I see the posters and read about what’s going on and think, „Maybe one should go“. Then the exhibition closes and I haven’t seen it. So it’s a good thing when I get, kind of, forced to go. This time I signed myself up for a group visit with some ladies I’ve met for the Kunstpalast. Actually, I didn’t even know what they were showing, I just went by my own words that I tell my co-worker sometimes and that she really likes to quote back to me („Gör ditt liv till mer än en avsiktsförklaring“ – „Make your life more than a declaration of intent“).

They were showing Jean Tinguely in the Art Palace that is lying picturesquesly by the river Rhine. Okay, it also has some nazi-architecture charm over itself, but that’s something you get have to get over. Jean Tinguely was a name completely unknown to me and it amused me when the guide said that he was „Nikki de Saint Phalle’s husband“. Because how often is the male part someone’s plus one and only after that a person in their own right? That’s more of a girl thing. Anyway, Jean is of course an artist in his own right and he is certainly challenging the art amateur like me. The entire exhibit was loud and full of, pardon me, rubbish. It seemed to be his thing to collect crap and build things out of that. Because these things were already fragile when he built them, they are now extremely difficult to transport, the guide explained,and many may no longer be turned on. Once you had reconciled your inner critic with the pisspots and Kandinsky-copies hanging from walls, making awful noise, you could see a kind of message. I was particularily taken by the „Ballet de Pauvres“, Ballet of the Poor, which had lots of poor people’s objects and clothes hanging from the ceiling,and which every 8 minutes started to jerk and twitch like crazy. Not only was it almost unbearble to watch because it felt like being a voyeur to some kind of serious epileptic seizure, the interplay of lowest class interior and violent convulsions also felt very political.

The inner court of the art palace

This is actually not Tinguely but something from the permanent exhibition. Aren’t arabic letters so pretty?

Super creepy installation by the rubbish artist

Football

These past two weeks under which I have become a fierce lover of Island – not very original, I know – nobody asked me if I wanted to meet up and watch the matches. I sat alone on my sofa semi-watching Sweden embarrass us/themselves, realizing Wales actually had a soccer team and seeing Germany march through to the next round. But Saturday! Saturday I woke to three messages from friends asking me if I’m up for watching the match tonight. After intensive listening to ndrinfo, the North German info radio, I now know that Germany’s opponent tonight, Italy, is our „Angstgegner“ (fear[ed] opponent) and that we never managed to beat them. I am sure my friends are eager to watch this game with me because a) I am known for my passionate dislike of the Italian team b) Germany is bringing home a historical victory tonight. In any case, I am at my aunt’s and uncle’s 100th birthday party during the match (they’re turning 100 together, not each.)

Vacation and work

„Are you going on vacation again?“ my extra co-worker said in slight disbelief when I said goodbye yesterday. I can admit I have a similar feeling – wasn’t I just off for two weeks in May? I was and I hadn’t really planned to take leave this early but my co-worker will be gone later this month and we don’t leave at the same time, especially not with our intern at the office now. I’ve become a supervisor which is a funny feeling and comes with some new challenges. But I won’t deny that we’re also having great fun (those time we understand what our Southern Swede is acutally saying). I worked from home while I was sick and came in some half-days because I felt it is less beneficial to sit at home worrying about things not getting done than actually doing them one-handed. The first time I came in after my surgery, I was met with seriously overwhelming enthusiasm. My simple presence in the office has, according to my co-worker, a motivational effect. Not the worst compliment you can get.

Now I am leaving Dizzle for a week to frequent my much-frequented routes: the German Northwest, Hamburg, Stockholm and Uppsala. I have beat my own record, it’s been half a year since I last went! My planning for this trip has been below Helen-standard but whatever, I am so looking forward to seeing my Sweden-bound dearest friends!